The holidays are upon us, but it’s not all gift giving, tree trimming and eggnog drinking. This is also the time of year when scammers come out in force. While OpenDNS is the single best way to protect yourself and your loves ones from phishing and forgeries, education is key. To complement our great phishing quiz my colleague Erin posted about here, we’ve compiled a list of the most common, and tricky, holiday phishing scams. Brush up, take note and avoid getting duped.

Scam: Air Travel Deals

With so many travelers still scrambling to buy last-minute air tickets, it’s important to be extremely careful when clicking through to an airline’s website from a promotional email. Phishing websites like this one spoofing American Airlines are not legitimate. The URL for this one, www.aa-advantager.com, is the giveaway — even though it’s close to the real domain (www.aa.com).

Scam: Holiday Shopping

If you’re like me, you’re doing most of your holiday shopping online this year. So it’s no surprise that scammers are spoofing websites like eBay (one of the most spoofed brands in phishing scams all year long) and trying to trick shoppers into entering their login credentials. When doing shopping online, the safest way to get to your destination site is to type its URL directly into your address bar.

Scam: Money Transfers

For better or worse, lots of people skip the gift buying altogether and just give cash. That’s why we’re including money transfer-themed phishes on our list. We can’t stress enough: any time you deal in currency online, be extra careful. The safest way to get to a website is to type its URL straight into your address bar.

Scam: Connect with Loved Ones

No doubt Skype usage increases during the holidays when the revolutionary service is used to see the smiling faces of family members abroad. But we all need to take great caution when phishes this sophisticated exist. Note that while the URL (http://skype.host.org/account/signin_form.php) is very convincing, it’s not the real Skype domain.

If you check your email over the next few days, you’ll see a holiday greeting from OpenDNS complete with the fantastic cartoon above. It was created for us by my good friend and amazing artist Deana Sobel. We liked it so much we wanted to share it more broadly.

As we look to 2011, we’re incredibly excited about what’s in store for OpenDNS.

Thank you for your support — for setting up OpenDNS in your homes, schools and business — as we truly wouldn’t be the company we are today without our millions of passionate users. So thank you! And from all of us at OpenDNS, we wish you happy holidays and a fantastic new year.

PS: For those of you who aren’t fans of the politically correct speak: Merry Christmas!

Today marks the first day of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). Initiated by the Department of Homeland Security in 2004, NCSAM is an opportunity for each of us to take a look at how we protect ourselves, our offices, our schools and our families online. We’re longtime supporters of NCSAM: In conjunction with National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2006, we launched PhishTank, the largest community clearinghouse of phishing data online — today it’s being used to block 1 million phishing attempts per month.

Since you’re using OpenDNS, you’re already doing one of the best things you can do to protect yourself and everyone on your network. OpenDNS blocks phishing sites, protects you from malware (like last year’s Conficker virus) and gives you comprehensive Web content filtering options, three things that already put you ahead of the curve.

As part of NCSAM, every day for the next 31 days, we’ll be tweeting out an actionable security tip from our Twitter account with the hashtag #NCSAM. Tips will range from the simplest, most basic suggestions to more advanced options. We also want to hear your best cyber security tips! Reply at us on Twitter with your ideas, tips and best practices for online safety.

It’s hard to believe, but it was four years ago this month that OpenDNS launched. Just a short time into our quest to make the world’s Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable, we’ve grown into the world’s largest DNS provider and achieved some unprecedented milestones. Our growth is largely attributable to people like you spreading the word about our service and introducing others to a better DNS, and we can’t thank you enough for that.

Just a few of the our milestones:

• A full one percent of all Internet users in the world — more than 18 million people globally — are using OpenDNS.
• One out of every three public K-12 schools in the U.S. uses OpenDNS, including some of the country’s largest school districts in the largest cities, like Baltimore, Detroit and San Diego.
• Just shy of 1 million phishes submitted to the PhishTank, the free community Web site where anyone can submit, verify, track and share phishing data. (Help us hit the 1 million landmark — submit a phish here.)
• A staggering 26+ billion DNS queries per day.

And of course, we’ve accomplished all of this with zero downtime, making the Internet more reliable than ever before for all of our users.

We’re going to be celebrating our birthday on Twitter over the next week by giving away four prizes (for our fourth birthday) every day. What kind of stuff are we talking about? Prizes include free home subscriptions for OpenDNS Deluxe, stylish OpenDNS t-shirts, goodie bags with awesome OpenDNS merch, and more!

Participating is simple — the easiest way to enter is to follow OpenDNS on Twitter and then retweet this post:

OpenDNS.com turns 4 this month! Giving away 4 prizes daily to celebrate. Follow @OpenDNS & RT this to enter! #OpenDNS4

Or, simply start following @OpenDNS and then tell your followers why they should use OpenDNS, too. Include #OpenDNS4 to have your tweets included in the contest. Each tweet is a separate entry, so feel free to enter more than once. We’ll pick daily winners randomly from all who enter, and we’ll follow up with you on Twitter if you’re a winner!

If you’ve been following along on the OpenDNS blog, you know that over the past few weeks we’ve made it our mission to celebrate and reward system administrators, with both the SysAdmin of the Year Awards, and our upcoming System Administrator Appreciation Party. System Administrator Appreciation Day is fast approaching — July 30 — and with it comes the promise of kudos and thanks from the people you work with.

But what if you think that there’s a possibility your boss or manager might not remember about System Administrator Appreciation Day? We’ve got you covered there as well, thanks to our one-step boss reminder service. All you need to do is fill out the important info — your name, your boss’ name and email*, etc — on this handy form and we’ll email your boss on your behalf. Here’s what the message will look like:

_{*We promise not to use your email, or your boss’ email for anything except the friendly reminder service.}

I love this time of year. People are cheerful and kind, offering to help each other however they can.

One of the easiest ways to help others? We’ve reminded you before, but while you’re home for the holidays this year, do your loved ones a favor and set up OpenDNS on their computer or router. (We recommend the router if possible. But don’t forget to download the updater client on their machine to make sure their IP stays updated if dynamic.)

The simple, two-minute change will not only make their Internet better performing – faster and more reliable – but it will also keep them safe online. OpenDNS’s on-by-default phishing protection will keep them safe from fraudulent sites and take the guesswork out of identifying them. If they have little kids around, ask if they want Parental Controls on, too. And add a custom image – a family photo, perhaps? – and custom message for the Guide and block pages for extra personalization.

Happy holidays to everyone. Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy holiday season.

This holiday season, before you exhaustively search for the perfect gift for everyone on your list, look no further than the Gift of Safe.

By giving the Gift of Safe (aka the OpenDNS Deluxe Family Pack) all of your Internet-connected loved ones benefit greatly. Here are 10 reasons you should give the Gift of Safe to everyone on your list. Have a better reason? Tell us in the comments.

10. It will keep them safe from phishing attacks, taking the guesswork out of identifying Internet scams when you’re not around to help.

9. It will give them more than 50 categories of content in the easiest-to-use Parental Controls solution available.

8. It will automatically protect them from Internet-scale botnets and certain types of malware, like Conficker.

7. It will let them customize the block pages with a household-specific image and message so parents can communicate to their kids why a site is blocked.

6. It will automatically correct common typos, avoiding unintentional exposure to unsafe and/or inappropriate Web sites.

5. It’s trusted by more than 25,000 schools, including some of the U.S.’s largest districts, today to keep kids safe online. (What better endorsement than that?)

4. It has many non-safety related benefits, namely making their Internet overall faster and more reliable.

3. The price affordable enough to gift to multiple people.

2. It’s a gift that gives for an entire year.

1. Most importantly, it’s a gift you can feel great about giving.

We’ve made it easy to give OpenDNS Deluxe. Here’s how Gift of Safe works: You purchase a one-year subscription (valid from purchase date until Dec. 31, 2010) to the OpenDNS Deluxe Family Pack on www.GiftofSafe.com for as many people as you wish. Each recipient gets an email notifying them that they’ve been gifted by you — included in the email is a special code. The recipient is prompted to go to OpenDNS.com, redeem the code and create an account.

Many of you have already given OpenDNS to loved ones. We asked you on Facebook for your stories and heard so many great ones. Check out some of the best here.